Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives

"Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives (also known as Finagle's corollary to Murphy's Law) is usually rendered:

Anything that can go wrong, will—at the worst possible moment"

Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finagle's_law

Yes, after spending an entire blog rejoicing that my children were FINALLY better, we spent another night with a vomiting child. Poor Rebekah was having such a hard time with her cough that it actually made her gag and, once again, throw up. I've hesitated blogging since then for fear of subjecting myself to Finagle's Law of Dynamic Negatives. In other words, I didn't want to be wrong again, or tempt fate, or however else it could be stated.

So... we are all doing much better, just in time to have my family come to town and get ready for Thanksgiving. I'm making my first turkey this year....we'll see how it goes. My sister had to tell me that the stuffing goes inside the turkey, so even though I wasn't in charge of sides for the dinner, I would still be in charge of the stuffing. Lest you think I'm completely ignorant, I DID know that stuffing usually goes inside the turkey, but I had conveniently forgotten that now that it's my turn to cook the turkey. Oh, the peace of having a selective memory!

The one sad thing for our family will be not being able to be with Kent's family. They're all headed up to Pinetop to be with Linda and Woody, and Kristi's family. Luckily, my father is popular enough with Kent's brother, Owen, that they're coming back on Friday so the boys can golf together. At least we'll get a chance to see them this week.

Happy Thanksgiving!!! (See my previous blog for one of the things I'm most grateful for.)

Kimberlina and family

Silver Lining

Today was better all around; both girls seemed to be feeling a little better, and nobody threw up or had diarrhea....yea!!! Then there was that moment that is so elusive - the one where you feel like it's all worth the lack of sleep, constant cleaning, and watching the Wiggles Christmas DVD for the 100th time (Maija has caught on that Christmas is coming, so we're already hearing all about it.)

Maija and I had just finished reading a bedtime story which was about a little girl and her grandma. At the end of the story, I asked Maija about her Grandma and Mummi. Then she said, "Mommy, where's your Grandma and Mummi?" The question made me a little emotional, especially thinking about my grandmother who I had been very close to and who passed away 6 years ago.

I told her that I had a Grandma and a Mummi, but both of them had died. She looked up at me and said, "Mommy, I love you!" and then she hugged me. I felt like it was such an intuitive reaction from her. I'm sure she has no conception of what death is, but somehow she knew that talking about my grandmother made me sad. Those moments are the payoff; it's better than any paycheck I've ever gotten.

Kimberlina

What a week!

I've just about had it with flus, colds, and a list of other ailments that have been taking over our house. The girls have been sick for a week now, after a short one-week respite from having the stomach flu before. This time they have some kind of combo - head colds and stomach flu. Just when I thought we were past the worst of it, Maija threw up out of nowhere this morning (all over the couch, I might add.) Argh!!!

I'm sure the girls feel miserable, and I'm pretty miserable too. I'm amazed at how much everyone's life is completely transformed in our house by one of these little bugs. What I hate the most is being stuck in the house day after day. Last night I was feeling so closed in (hadn't been out for 4 days, except for a nice drive with my brother, Rusty, in his rented hummer...very cool!) - Kent told me to go do something, so I wouldn't go crazy. As he put it, "You're entitled to sanity just as much as I am." I thought that was nice of him to recognize that my sanity was at risk *grin*. Seriously, though, I'm so grateful for an understanding husband.

So, for my little escape I decided I did not want to do anything resembling errands. I went to the mall knowing that I had almost zero money to spend. I'm not a window shopper; I really hate shopping when I know that I won't be buying anything, but I couldn't think of anything else to do that didn't...well...require money. I wandered in and out of a few stores and read signs that said, "Sale! 60% Off Everything!" I'd go in with the hope that maybe 60% off meant I could buy something I liked for $5. Yeah, that didn't happen. I think the closest I found was a shirt I thought was OK for $15. So the OK shirt stayed on the rack, and I decided to get a hot chocolate for $5 instead, which was delicious by the way. Although I was only gone for an hour and a half, I felt completely revived and ready to face the night of crying, achy, sick children.

Despite the frustrations of taking care of sick children, I'm brought back to reality pretty quickly every time I talk to my sister, Barb, or one of my single friends who either say or imply, "Stop complaining! At least you have kids!" It's true. I wanted a family for so long, and I finally have what I wanted. I'd rather have puking babies than no babies at all.

Hmmmm ... 18 Months Later

I guess I never got quite into the blogging like I thought I would, but lately I've been getting e-mail s from friends with links to their blogs, and I'll admit it, I've been jealous. Somehow I got lost in Mommyland and feel like I've been left behind technologically speaking. It wasn't too long ago that I was involved enough in the e-world to have a "homepage" whereby I updated everyone on my life. Then somewhere in the last few years, while I was having babies, blogging, texting and iPhones came along.

My texting skills are developing (although I don't have one of those cool keypad phones), my blogging is, well, 18 months behind, and I have yet to buy (or afford) an iPhone. However, I will challenge anyone to a diaper-change-wrestling-match with my 10 month-old! Yes, my skills have been developing, just not the internet/computer/iPod/cell phone ones. We did get TiVo a couple of months ago, so we're feeling pretty darn savvy these days, even if about 90% of what we TiVo is Dora, Dora and more Dora!!!

The Updates


I think I wrote maybe once or twice at the very beginning of my pregnancy with Rebekah (see above re: 10 month-old wrestling baby.) I said something to the effect that I wasn't sick at all yet (Ha!!!) and how nice it was to feel good during pregnancy. Yeah, that lasted maybe two more weeks after that post, and then the vomiting began. I did get lucky during that pregnancy, though, because our insurance covered Zofran, which is a miracle anti-nausea medication. Unfortunately, it doesn't really stop the nausea, just the vomiting. In other words, I still had a miserable pregnancy.

After surviving 7 1/2 months of nausea, early contractions, and general yuckiness, Rebekah was born on January 15th at 35 1/2 gestational weeks. She was taken by c-section (my 2nd) and was 6 lbs. 11 ounces - she was a big, healthy baby. I finally had a "normal" delivery, compared to what I went through with Maija. Since then Rebekah has been a healthy, happy girl. She and Maija are doing great.

Kent is one year out from finishing his master's in alternative fuels engineering. We're excited about that! We also recently moved to another part of town into a newer and much bigger home. Everybody seems happy about being in the new house. During the first week or so after the move, whenever I would tell Maija that were going "home", she would say, "No! I don't want to go to the dirty house. I want to go to the new house." I'm not sure why she decided the old house was dirty; I think maybe she associates it with the chaos right before the move...or perhaps the fact that our house was surrounded by dirt. I don't know.

More to come... I mean it this time!

Kimberlina Farny